Evan Longoria hit the Rays’ 9th-ever inside the park homer today in a 9-6 victory for the good guys over the Baltimore Orioles. That got me thinking about what a rare and exciting feat it is. It’s not the “Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” (the Kentucky Derby), or in baseball terms even equivalent to a no-hitter which builds in intensity, pitch by pitch for three plus hours. But when that knuckling line drive slipped past Adam Jones and went all the way to the wall, and when Longo rounded second and headed to third with plenty of time to kill, I was slapping the side of the couch screaming “Wave him around, Foley, wave him around!” Yeah, the heart gets pumping a little bit.

In honor of that, I dug up some things you probably don’t already know about inside the park home runs. If you already know all of this stuff, you are a huge nerd:

Also known as a “leg home run” or a “quadruple”.

If there is any defensive error, it is not scored as a home run, but rather the runner advancing on error.

Of the 154,483 home runs hit from 1951–2000, 975 (about 1 in every 158) were inside-the-park. The percentage has dwindled over the years with the growing propensity toward power hitting and smaller parks.

The since-1950 record for in the park homers by one player (13) is held by Wille Wilson (Royals, A’s, Cubs), but considering he was busted on a cocaine rap in 1983 one wonders if his speed wasn’t related to….well, speed. A few guys actually hit over 40 of them “back in the day”, but the parks and the game itself were pretty different back then.

Kyle Blanks (Padres) is the heaviest player to hit one, tipping the scales at 285 at the time. At 262 lbs, Prince Fielder (Brewers) is still only the third heaviest player to hit an inside the park homer.

Seriously? No. No. Wait. No. Seriously?! Really, we’re going to drop two of three against Baltimore, then another against Kansas City, then another another racing toward disaster in Kansas City (game still in progress at press time…..but looking awful). Its not like the AL East is on the line or anything. Not a good idea to go into the playoffs with some momentum.
Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhrrrrrghh.
Pitchers: the idea is to keep the other team from hitting the ball wherever they want and scoring runs.
Batters: the idea is to use the wooden thing to strike the white, round, moving thing somewhere between the white lines but away from the nine fellas standing around out there. Got it? Grrrrreat. Now back to work. There’s either four weeks or one week of baseball left this year. Which is it gonna be?

The Rays are in Oakland tonight for the first game of a four game series against the Oakland Athletics. From there its south to LA for a 3 game series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Rays don’t have the best track record on the west coast…we all remember what happened the last time the Rays were in Oakland! That’s right…they were at the wrong end of a perfect game! The SECOND perfect game in less than a calendar year! That being said, I’m sure there is a little bit of overall anxiety, or maybe that’s just me. Nothing like staying up to watch a west coast game when you are on the east coast, especially when the Rays lose and then you get to go to bed @ 1 am pissed off.

Anyway, let’s recap the home stand. The Rays went 5-1 on their most recent home stand taking 2 of 3 from Baltimore and sweeping the Rangers (in a BIG way). The first game against Baltimore was a little rough, losing 5-0 surely wasn’t the right way to start things off. Especially coming off of a bad road-trip in which, at times the offense was totally non-existent. It was nice to see the Rays hitting the ball and driving in runs. We all know that they are capable of driving in a lot of runs. It’s almost as though they are such a cohesive group of players that when there is a lot of offense, there is a LOT of offense, and when there is none…I mean there is NONE.

I think the highlights of the home stand were Longoria making good contact and driving in runs, BJ Upton being productive again, and of course the exceptional defense and running game that the Rays are known for. Of couse, the pitching all year has been pretty damn good. All of these things combined are definitely a formula for success…enough to win the World Series? I think so, but we still have quite a bit of baseball to play. Let’s hope that the slumps are behind us and we can push forward to the ultimate goal of the 2010 season, which is to win the World Series!